Weird Science, the movie and tv show: three gay-subtext couples, two gay-vague guys, and a lot of bulges and butts. Plus Lee's dick.

Weird Science (1985) is a John Hughes brat pack comedy with a paranormal twist. Nerds Gary and Wyatt's (Anthony Michael Hall, Ilan-Mitchell Smith) are discouraged because the Girls of Their Dreams are dating a pair of belligerent, obnoxious preppies (Robert Downey Jr., Robert Rusler), and won't give them a chance (maybe they're not into three-ways?  Try asking them out separately).  So they use a computer to create their perfect dream girl, Lisa: she is not only hot but super-smart, plus she has magical powers.

I forget most of the plot after 40 years, but wikipedia has helpfully filled in the details, Instead of having sex with them, Lisa conjures them a car, gets them fake ids, and hosts a wild party, where she thwarts their adversaries and their bullying older brother, military-school graduate Chet (Bill Paxton, butt right).

She also summons a pack of rabid bikers to kidnap the Girls, so Gary and Wyatt can mount a daring rescue and win them.

It was cheesy stuff, and entirely heteronormative.  There was a scattering of the incessant homophobia that one sees in every John Hughes movie, but spewed by the evil Chet, not by one of the good guys.  That was a big win in the era.  

Plus some strong gay subtexts between Gary and Wyatt and the prettyboy preppies Ian and Max.  And quite a surprising amount of beefcake, including Ilan Mitchell-Smith's bulge and Bill Paxton's butt.

I wanted to do a "any gay roles/are they gay in real life" profile of one of the guys, but I can't find anything suitable.

Don't pay attention to the femme-half shirt and girly underwear.  Ilan-Mitchell Smith, now a history professor, is straight in real life.

Anthony Michael Hall, the darling of the Brat Pack, appeared in Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, and Johnny B Goode, and as an adult The Dead Zone and Awkward.  Straight characters, with maybe one exception, and straight in real life.

Brat Packer Robert Downey Jr. appeared in Back to School, The Pick-Up Artist, Johnny B. Goode, became famous for Chaplin (playing the silent-era comedian), and went on to play Iron Man and Sherlock Holmes.  More straight characters, with maybe one exception, and....well, you get the idea.

At least we know that Robert Rusler (butt left) is a gay ally: he befriended his Nightmare on Elm Street 2 co-star Mark Patton, and took him to some of the gay bars in West Hollywood (no, we never met).  But his tv work, in The Outsiders, Babylon 5, Snoops, Murder She Wrote, Bones, Ray Donovan...as far as I can tell, all heteronormative.  And...straight in real life.

Let's try the Weird Science TV Series.

It aired on the USA Network from 1994 to 1998. I watched on occasion, usually while on the treadmill at the gym. Gary and Wyatt are now played by Michael Manasseri and John Mallory Asher. Lisa characterizes herself as a "magic genie," and Wyatt's parents are absent, leaving his older brother Chet (Lee Tergesen) to look after/bully them.  

The "winning the Girl of Our Dreams" plotline appeared in just the first two or three episodes; later Lisa turns the boys into girls, clones them,  turns them into rock stars, traps them in a horror movie, traps them in The Twilight Zone, transports them to the Old West, and brings a video game villain to life. 

More after the break

Gemstones Episode 2.1: Junior likes dicks, Kelvin likes pecs, and f**k, yeah! We got both.

Previous: Gemstones Season 1 finale: Judy and Kelvin begin to heal, and Scotty joins the family

Righteous Gemstones Season 2 is my favorite.  Season 1 muddled the Gideon-Scotty plotline, Season 3 had some infuriating queerbaiting, and Season 4 was rushed and muddled, but Season 2 did the Kelvin/Keefe and Junior/Eli romances exactly right.   

Title: "I Speak in the Tongues of Men and Angels."  I Corinthians 13.1: "Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal." Charity means "love," of course.  We'll see who is lacking.

Memphis Soul Stew: Memphis, 1968. Teenage Eli Gemstone, the Maniac K*d (Jake Kelley), is playing a heel, a pro wrestling villain: "from the wrong side of the tracks, a newcomer to the League, all muscle, all attitude."  He fights dirty, pretending to reconcile with opponent Kyle Hawk, then throwing him out of the ring.  

As he fights, his manager Glendon Marsh (Wayne Duvall) cheers. Glendon's teenage son Junior (Tommy Nelson) watches, sometimes happy but usually disturbed.  Is he jealous of the attention Eli is getting?  Is he a rebellious teenager during the era of the Generation Gap?.

Nice Cock:  In the locker room, Glendon offers Eli "some bonus pay on the South Side," while Junior looks on, smoking a cigarette, still either jealous or angry. As they leave, they pass a naked guy. "That's a nice cock, Ernie," Glendon says.  Junior is so busy looking that he trips, and then looks back again.  The teenager is definitely into cocks and butts.

The Loan Enforcer: Glendon is a loan shark as well as a wrestling manager: the job involves beating up a deadbeat.  Eli and Junior both go, squabbling over who's the boss.  

"Kill 'em!" we hear.  Psych!  It's the tv.  We meet a slovenly, drunken, foul-mouthed, abusive jackass of a husband.  While Junor subdues his wife and son, Eli punches him a few times and asks for the money, and when he doesn't have it, breaks his thumbs. Junior laughs "derangedly" (according to the subtitles).

Afterwards Glendon drops Eli off, hands him some money, and tells him, "Buy yourself something nice." This is a feminizing statement. 

As Eli drives off on his motorcycle, we hear Buck Owens' "Tall Dark Stranger":

 They say a tall dark stranger is a demon, and  that a devil rides closely by his side.

 So if Junior is the demon, Eli must be the devil riding beside him.  How long will they ride together?

Abusive Daddies all the way down:  Eli drives to the Gemstone residence (it's not a stage name, apparently), where his abusive dad chastises him for being late for dinner. So they're eating after Eli's wrestling match?  Like at 11 or 12 pm?   There's also a mousy, skittish mom and a little sister, May-May (important in Season 3). 

Ordered to say grace, Eli jokes: "Good food, good meat, good God, let's eat," which makes May-May laugh.  Dad slaps him.  End of flashback.

We're fine with the f*ggots:  In 2022, elderly Eli Gemstone is a megachurch pastor and televangelist.  He and the satellite church ministers are discussing the case of Pastor Butterfield (Victor Williams), caught videotaping his wife and another woman having sex in a dance club restroom, while they were all high on Molly ("we thought they were Sweetarts").  The story made the front page of The New York Times, thanks to reporter Thaniel Block (Jason Schwartzman), who has made a career of publicizing ministerial sex scandals.  Eli wants to be lenient, but the others object.  (Left: random pecs)

A Spanish speaking pastor explains: "My church is ok with the maricones (roughly f*ggots), but we're not ready for swinging and tropus."     Pastor Diane translates: "His church is really cool with the gays and the queers, but not so much about the swingers and the thruples."  They fire Pastor Butterfield; he tries to commit suicide.  

Left: God Squad pecs

Tell the girls:  A young man rides a motorcycle to the Gemstone Compound, doing crazy stunts (this will be important later), while the background song advises:

Tell the girls that I am back in town.  They'd better beware

They may run, and they may hide.

I'll follow, and I'll be there.

A stalker?  At least we know that he's not the closeted gay minister.  He turns out to be Eli's grandson Gideon, back from a job as a stuntman to assist with the Gemstone ministry.  He's going to move into the house that Eli built for his abusive dad.

In other news, Gideon's younger brother Abraham has been masturbating, and leaving "semen loads" all over the house, like in the freezer next to the Dreamsicles.  

Left: Selfie. Not Gideon or Abraham

We cut to a church service with Eli Gemstone, Jesse, Judy, and Kelvin, announcing the start of their streaming service, GODD.  We see Jesse's wife Amber, their sons, and Judy's husband BJ in the audience.  No partner for Kelvin. He must be single

F*ck, yeah:  After the service, the family drives in a caravan to Jason's Steak House.  They get out of their cars in slow motion and walk past the al fresco area, heterosexual couples reveling in their nuclear family conformity, the "job, house, wife, progeny" litany of my youth made visible. The background song brags about their heteronormative success:

Turn your head when I walk by -- I got the world at my feet.
All I want out of every day, is to wake up every morning
Sun is shining, smiling, and we've covered every room 

 Wait -- where's Kelvin?

Suddenly the record scratches off. Two vans pull up with a flexing muscle Christ and the logo "Strength above All Else." Twelve muscle men emerge, wearing identical canvas gis: the God Squad! Biceps and pecs, abs, bulging flexing intruding on the smug primness of the nuclear families. Wait -- where are the bulges.  They wear cargo pants that don't show anything.

There is no romance here.  There is no heterosexual desire.  It is raw homoerotic power. The song changes to:

Fuck, yeah!  Fuck, yeah!  Fuck, yeah!

More after the break

Noah Matthews Matofsky: Head Lost Boy, model, disability advocate, Oscar Wilde fan, boyfriend. With bonus n*de Matthews and Captain Hook's hook

  

Peter Pan & Wendy (2023) omits the most egregious heterosexualization of recent Peter Pan movies by skipping the usual Peter-Wendy romance, and by  making Captain Hook (Jude Law, below) gay.  Well, he's usually gay-coded, but his time around he mentions a childhood  boyfriend  -- Peter himself (Alexander Molony), who refused to leave Never-Never Land and grow up, while Hook choose an adult career as a pirate.

I got the same rhetoric when I was a kid: "When you grow up, you will drop your same-sex loves  to devote your life to what really matters, finding and winning the Girl of Your Dreams."  I turned 14, 15, 16, 17 and the joy I felt in masculine smiles never vanished, but my boyfriends began to treat me as a mere chum, someone to discuss girls with. They were Captain Hook leaving Neverland, but I remained, refusing to "grow up."    

Some of the other male actors were of interest, including Joshua Pickering (Wendy's brother John Darling), a cute member of the Short Guys Brigade.  And Noah Matthews,  who plays the gay-coded Slightly: the leader of the Lost Boys, the only one who remembers anything of his life before Neverland, and the most musical.

"But your son said the sleepover was 'clothing optional.'" 

 Sorry, that's another Noah.  Slightly was played by Noah Matthews Matofsky, the first actor with a visible disability to star in a Disney movie, a leap forward in disability representation.  Especially since the character Slightly is not disabled. Noah was cast because the casting director, and then director David Lowery, loved his audition (they also bonded over a comparison of the Lost Boys and Lord of the Flies).

This was the 16-year old's first on-screen acting job, and rather daunting -- he had to spend six months in Canada during the COVID pandemic, spend hours filming in the hot sun, and still do his schoolwork.  But he loved the challenge, and there were perks -- the Lost Boys shared an apartment with a pool on the roof, so after the shooting and schoolwork, they had pool parties.  Tell me more.  

And Michael Darling (the one with the teddy bear) was played by Jacobi Jupe, brother of Noah's crush Noah Jupe (left). It's not everyday that you get to hear all of the gossip about your crush from your roommate.

More after the break.  Caution: Explicit.

Max Ehrich: Disney Channel dancer, Dome hacker, gay soap opera teen -- wait, is that a different actor? At least the d*ck is really his

When Max Ehrich (try to type that without adding an "l") appeared on the celebrity penis website, I did some preliminary research, and found that he is gay in real life, dating Connor Paolo, and he played a gay teen on The Young and the Restless.  

So this will be my third profile of a gay soap opera teen.   

Max played Fenmore Baldwin, son of Michael Baldwin and Lauren Fenmore, born in 2006, but turned into a teenager when he took over the role (2012-15).  

Most of his plotline involved drugs:  becoming addicted, stealing drugs from the hospital and spending a month in prison, overdosing and going to rehab.  He was blackmailed into spiking the punch at a party, so everyone would lose consciousness, and Detective Mark Harding (Chris McKenna) could murder Austin, who was having an affair with his niece Summer, and frame her.  

Also Fen is crushing on Summer, so she talks him into a variety of misdeeds, including cyberbullying  Jamie Vernon (not for being gay).  Then, when she starts crushing on Jamie, Fen frames him for theft, is accused of pushing him off the roof, and bullies him into a suicide attempt.

Next Fen's drug dealer, Carmine (Marco Dapper, left), who also happens to be having an affair with his mother, is murdered, and Fen thinks that he did it...

Wait, back up: a crush on Summer?  What happened?  Where is the gay plotline? 

Maybe they meant some other project.  Max begins his career as a Nickelodeon-Disney Channel boy, playing a dancer in High School Musical 3 and Shake It Up, Carly's boyfriend in an episode of ICarly, and CJ's older brother, who gets two girlfriends, in nine episodes of 100 Things to Do Before High School.

In Under the Dome (2013-15), an impenetrable alien dome is lowered over a stereotypic small town. Among the stranded visitors are a lesbian couple, a murderer, and  in Season 2, computer hacker Hunter May (Max).  He gets a girlfriend.

American Princess (2019-20): a mis-titled comedy featuring a girl who abandons her wealthy lifestyle to work at a Renaissance faire.  Max plays her boyfriend. 

Southern Gospel (2023): A "rock n roll star" realizes his childhood dream of becoming a preacher.  Ugh.

It's based on the real-life  Dr. Gary Smith,  who founded the City of Life Church in Kissimmee, Florida. Ugh. 

A Cowboy Christmas Romance (2023): A standard Christmas romcom: lady with a high-pressure career in the Big City spends the holidays in a small town, where she finds love with a cowboy (Adam Senn).  

I don't know which of these guys, if either, is Adam, but Max plays her brother.  The plot synopses on Wikipedia and Decider don't state whether he is gay or not, but presumably not, or there would be massive headlines eveywhere. 

More after the break